GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Driven by capacity constraints in the existing pipeline system, energy companies are eyeing the Great Lakes as a highway for transporting heavy crude oil from Canadian tar sands to refineries in the Midwest.

That traffic carries an inherent risk of an oil spill. Unfortunately, regional authorities are ill prepared for such a disaster, environmental advocates warn.

“Look at the Kalamazoo example and what happened there,” said Lyman Welch, a water quality program director with Chicago-based nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes, on Wednesday, Sept. 10.

A spill like that in Lake Michigan or Superior “would be a tragedy.”

Welch’s remarks came during the Great Lakes Restoration Conference happening this week in Grand Rapids. Last year, he authored a report that cited serious gaps in regional preparedness and response plans should a spill of heavy crude occur.

Although petroleum products are regularly shipped in large quantities across the Great Lakes, heavy crude oil products like diluted bitumen, or “dilbit,” is not.

The heavy crude is different than refined oil products. When the diluents in the crude product evaporate, the heavier bitumen sinks. That makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible in some cases, to cleanup.

Recovery technology that is being developed by federal agencies is not yet workable, Welch said, and there are large gaps in spill preparedness.

“The piece we really struggle with is the recovery of heavy oils off the bottom in deep water,” said Jerry Popiel, incident management advisor for the U.S. Coast Guard’s Ninth District, who spoke alongside Welch.

Welch and Popiel’s remarks are mirrored in a June 2013 U.S. Coast Guard research and development division report, which found that current spill response methods are “inadequate to find and recover submerged oil.”

“Responses to recent higher profile submerged oil spills have shown responders have almost no capability in detection and recovery,” the report read.

Although much was learned about cleaning up heavy crude following the Enbridge spill in the Kalamazoo River, additional research and development in heavy oil recovery technology and techniques is needed, Popiel said.

Currently, the Coast Guard is working in “unknown territory.”

The warnings about potential risks of crude oil shipping occur in the shadow of the 2010 Kalamazoo River spill aftermath and growing public concern about the aging twin oil pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac operated by Enbridge.

This year, attention paid to those risks has grown substantially — due, in part, to a University of Michigan study that concluded a pipeline break in the Straits area would be what environmentalists called a “death blow” to the Great Lakes economy.

“We are facing a huge industry demand to move oil, especially oil from the tar sands in Alberta… into the Midwest to different refineries for processing,” said Welch. “Much more oil is being produced than can be handled by existing pipeline capacity.”

Enbridge is proposing to build new and expand existing pipelines to try and handle this demand, Welch said. In Superior, Wis., Calumet Specialty Products Partners LP wants to begin shipping tar sands crude as early as the 2015 season.

Calumet, which operates a refinery in Superior, and dock partner Elkhorn Industries want to refurbish a dock to ship heavy crude by tanker or barge. Wisconsin regulators are conducting an environmental assessment of the proposal.

Welch expressed concern that approval of something which affects an entire region is left in the hands of only a single state agency -- the Wisconsin DNR, in this case.

“It’s time for the entire region to have a real discussion to understand the benefits and real risks of shipping this type of crude through our region,” Welch said.